AJAX, Ont. -- By 4 p.m. on Wednesday, a crowd of about 150 people had gathered on the Harwood Bridge, an overpass that spans 12 lanes of Highway 401, the nation’s busiest road.

Some were seniors. A group from the local legion, wearing red Support Our Troops T-shirts, handed out little paper Canadian flags. A mail carrier, done delivering mail, stopped by on his way home. A handful of students walked over from the nearby high school. Eight firefighters stood on the roofs of two fire trucks, and two paramedics stood on their ambulance. There were toddlers, and even a dog.

They had all come here, to this stretch of highway in Ajax, about 25 kilometres east of Toronto, to pay their respects as the body of Sergeant Prescott (“Scott”) Shipway made its way in a hearse from Canadian Forces Base Trenton to the Ontario Coroner’s office in downtown Toronto.

Sgt. Shipway, of Saskatchewan, was killed on Sunday in Kandahar province, Afghanistan.

Below the crowded bridge, three lanes of eastbound traffic were already backed up and crawling. Trucks heading west blasted their horns to greet the crowd; a nearby freight train sounded its whistle in support.

The ritual has become tragically familiar. The predictable path on Highway 401, along which every body of a dead Canadian soldier must travel, offers people in one of the most crowded parts of Canada a very tangible way to mourn. Ontario has renamed this stretch of the 401 the “Highway of Heroes.”

It is a ceremony so touching and so unique to this country that it has attracted international attention, including coverage in the British media suggesting the Canadian response is laudable and should be emulated.

“We can’t let them land to no one, can we?” said Ken Calverley, 75, one of those gathered on Wednesday on the bridge. He served as a youth in the British Army and now lives in Ajax. His big Canadian flag flapped in the warm breeze.

“You’ve got to think about the relations ... When they see the people up here on the bridge, it will hopefully give them a lift. Because it must be terrible to come to Toronto to pick up your son, and it’s a city most of them don’t know.”

As the crowd stood on the bridge on Wednesday, suddenly a police car zipped underneath, lights flashing, followed by three hearses. Hands poked from the hearse windows, waving to the crowd above. Within seconds, it was all over.

The arrangement, by which all soldiers pass this way, has its roots in the Bosnia conflict. When Canadian peacekeepers went to Bosnia, in 1996, the government contracted with the Ontario coroner’s office to perform post-mortems on the body of every Canadian soldier who died, said Dr. Bonita Porter, Ontario’s deputy chief coroner.

The Canadian Forces renewed that contract when it sent soldiers to Afghanistan in 2001.

“There were very few in Bosnia, thankfully,” Dr. Porter said. “There have been 97 fatalities in Afghanistan. We have done all 97 post-mortems.”

When a soldier dies, Canadian Forces performs a ramp ceremony at Trenton, Ont., to repatriate the body to Canadian soil. Then soldiers put the coffin in a hearse. Ontario Provincial Police escort the hearse, joined by military personnel and one or more cars of family. After the autopsy at the coroner’s office in Toronto, the body is released to the soldier’s family.

In downtown Toronto, one of the faithful mourners is Hazel Regan. Every time the Toronto woman hears that a Canadian soldier has died in Afghanistan, she stands on a downtown sidewalk where the cortège will pass, with a handmade sign and a flag.

On Wednesday, as usual, Ms. Regan was at her post.

“I have tremendous empathy for the men and women who support our country,” she said.

Ms. Regan’s only brother, Private William Patrick Regan, was 19 when he became the final soldier to die in Canada’s last major conflict, the Korean War. Pte. Regan died on July 17, 1953. After losing a coin toss with a fellow soldier, he left his tent to investigate an unexploded shell, and lost his life.

“I feel it very much when any soldier dies,” she said, fighting tears. “I just can’t help it. I just want them to know that there is at least one person who doesn’t mind that the traffic is stopped.”

On Saturday night at about 10 p.m., Ms. Regan headed to Bay and Bloor streets. On a sign, under “We Will Remember Them,” she had listed the names of three soldiers killed last week: Corporal Andrew Grenon, Corporal Mike Seggie and Private Chad Horn.

The city, in the throes of the Toronto International Film Festival, buzzed with paparazzi and gawkers, just steps from where she stood, straining to catch a glimpse of Hollywood stars Matt Damon and Keira Knightley.

“You can get some stars’ autographs with that,” a police officer told Ms. Regan, pointing to her furled poster.

“No,” she said. “It’s for a better purpose.”

She then learned that because of the film festival, police had rerouted the fallen soldiers’ three hearses to nearby Wellesley Street. She walked over, and minutes later, the procession went by. The families cars’ had all their windows rolled down on the warm September night.

“I just locked eyes with one woman,” Ms. Regan said. “Maybe a mother or a sister. She had tears in her eyes and I had tears in my eyes and we had a meeting of the grief.”

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